Three federal agencies ordered to coordinate wildfire research.
H.R. 9998 — Wildfire Research Coordination Act of 2026 · Filed by Brittany Pettersen (D-CO) · 2 cosponsors · Introduced Jul 30, 2026 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill requires the Secretary of Defense to sign a coordination agreement with the Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior within 180 days to align military and civilian fire science research priorities. The three agencies must identify shared research goals in wildfire mitigation, modeling, response, and recovery, then coordinate their existing research programs. The Defense Secretary must report back to Congress within one year on implementation.
Why we flagged it
The bill's sole operative mechanism is a directive to execute an interagency memorandum of understanding and report on implementation. It creates no new programs, appropriations, or authorities—only a coordination mandate between existing federal fire science efforts.
What the text implies
- The MOU may surface resource conflicts between DoD and civilian agencies if military fire science priorities diverge from Forest Service or Interior Department goals, potentially affecting budget allocation.
- Coordination could accelerate adoption of military-developed fire modeling or response technologies into civilian wildfire management, with unclear liability or intellectual property implications.
- The bill does not appropriate funds or mandate new research spending, so implementation depends on agencies reprioritizing existing budgets—actual coordination may be limited by resource constraints.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
The bill creates no new restrictions on citizens and imposes no costs. It mandates coordination between federal agencies on wildfire research—a public good that may improve fire mitigation, response, and recovery outcomes. The mechanism is purely administrative (an MOU and a report), with no private carve-outs or liability shields.
Named in the bill
Department of Defense, Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Department of Interior, Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, Environmental Security Technology Certification Program, Joint Fire Science Program
Where it stands
2 cosponsors: 2 Republicans.
- Jul 30, 2026 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Jul 30, 2026 — Referred to House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and House Committee on Agriculture · Congress.gov: “Referred to the Committee on Armed Services, and in addition to the Committees on Natural Resources…”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (1,372 characters) on Aug 12, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
As of — page rendered 2026-10-20.
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